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Managing you recording budget

Once you have decided on a studio, an engineer, and a producer, it boils down
to money. You need to ask some very important questions to get the most for your
money and negotiate a better price. (This information can also help the studio
owner understand how to prevent any miscommunications with his clients.)

If you are like most people, you are working within some kind of a budget.
You need to get as much information as you can from a prospective studio so you
can negotiate the best price, and so there will be no financial surprises when
you get the bill.

Here are some points that you may want to
consider:

How much does the studio charge?

Does it have a day rate?

Does it have an hourly rate?

Does it charge for load-in and setup?

Does it have different rates for setup, basic tracking, overdubs, and
mixing?

How long do you expect the session to last, and therefore how much will
it cost?

Does it offer a fl at rate for a certain number of songs?

How much will it cost to get your mixes just the way you want them?

What incidental charges are there for things like tape, hard disks, blank
CDs, and so on?

Can they master your recording, or will you have to hire a mastering
studio?

Are there any other issues that could crop up before your product is ready
for duplication or manufacturing?

Some studios will charge a day rate. And in some cases, this
can be a good thing, depending on the rate and the hours. A day rate can be
figured into blocks of 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 hours, or any other combination of
blocks of time. It may or may not include the payment to the engineer, so make
sure you know what you are getting before you start to move in your gear.

For sessions that can take days, block rates may be a good
way to save time and money. This way, the studio knows that the facility will
not be idle for the days that you have booked it. The owners will be much more
willing to make financial concessions, especially if you are planning on paying
for a lot of studio time from the start.

Some studios may charge an hourly rate and nothing else. If
that is the case, you’ll need a very good approximation of how many hours it
will take to record, mix, and perhaps master your entire project to your
complete satisfaction. If you don’t get this approximation right, you could
end up with an unfinished project and some empty pockets. You will have to rely
on the studio to quote you an overall price, which can be a daunting task
because it’s impossible for anyone to foresee the future. If the
studio quotes a flat rate for your entire project, it could end up making much
less money than if it charged the normal hourly rate.

However, if the studio doesn’t know approximately how long the project will
last, and you don’t know how long you’ll need to work on it, you could end
up running out of money before you finish. A flat rate can be the
riskiest proposition for the studio and probably the best deal for the
act, because any number of problems can affect the amount of time
needed to make a great product.

This may be your only chance to record this material, and the last thing you
want to do is compromise the overall sound because you run out of money.
Remember that the music business is very competitive. If you are shopping a demo
and/or trying to get a record deal from these recordings, you had better make
the absolute best record you can. People in the industry are very spoiled, and
they expect quality product.

If you can get the studio to stick to its original quote for the time
allotted to complete your project, you may not have to pay for any extra studio
hours past the original estimate. To that end, it would be wise to
draft a formal agreement setting forth all of the terms that you have agreed
upon. This way, the studio can’t change the terms after you have
already started the project. Get it in writing, or you could get hit with a very
large bill that you can’t pay and never receive your masters.

All studios want to stay booked every hour that they possibly can, because
that is how they stay in business. In fact, the studio may have a session booked
right after your session closes. Make sure you know exactly what
time you have to quit. If not, you could be in the middle of some
of the best playing you’ve ever done, and yet you will have to quit to make
room for some other band that’s booked the studio. You may never get to that
place in the creative process again.

Furthermore, if another band is coming in, you may lose any
non-automated settings on the mixing board or other outboard gear.
It’s always much harder to come back to something in the studio if things
have been changed than it is to just knock out what you need to do before anyone
else comes in and moves everything around.